Tag Archives: chiffon

I don’t ever plan on taking the summer off from blogging and somehow it always seems to happen. This year was partially due to a move across the country and partially due to losing my camera remote, but also just wanting to enjoy summer and sewing for hours and not worrying about (mostly self-imposed) blogging deadlines and whatnot.

But now I’m missing it again so hello from California!

Things I’ve been up to:

Saying goodbye to Boston and the lovely Crafty Foxes and moving back home to California. Hello drought and heat waves and having a backyard!

Sewing all the things. ALL the things. I have such a backlog it’s ridiculous. Forgive me if my next 15 blog posts start with “So I sewed this back in xxx month so I don’t remember how I did it.” If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that my mom got sick of my sewing stuff rapidly infecting the entire house so she cleared out our storage cottage thing in the backyard and I now have a tiny little sewing studio. It’s small but so easy to disappear into for hours. If the lighting weren’t so terrible in there I think I’d sew through the night.

Visiting Boston because my sister now lives there. No joke, she moved there for school a week before I moved back here. We own all the same furniture and appliances though, so we pretty much just traded.

Taking a flat pattern class at a local CC. This has been SO much fun. I was introduced to the sewing machine by my mom and then mostly self-taught from there so it’s been so refreshing to learn “the right way” to do a lot of things that I’ve just sort of guessed at. Also I’ve learned that darts aren’t scary. And that it’s super fun to move them around, especially to weird places. (And no, there will not be a Peneloping pattern line anytime soon. Talk to me in many years when I get tired of my day job. This is purely for fun!)

Getting ready to move again! Boyfriend and I decided we’re finally going to tolerate each others’ presence (just kidding) and move in together. Just as soon as we find an apartment. Which is super fun and not at all difficult in the Bay Area. Nope.

I also sewed this skirt! I bought Simplicity 1366 when it came out because it has a giant bow across the crotch, and when Boyfriend *finally* graduated from his program I decided it was the perfect occasion to wear it to. I was also deep into my “I’m about to move so I can’t start sewing a dress that will probably require a total of upwards of 50 yards of fabric” angst so I chose a very Cinderella-esque periwinkle for it. It’s coming off more blue in the photos but in person it’s more purpley and a bit paler.

I was originally going to do the top in the pattern too but all the fabrics I found that had the right stiffness looked too polyestery. Plus there was the issue of the one skirt fabric I fell in love with also being sheer, and me not wanting to deal with drafting a lining, which led to me deciding to just make a Nettie dress to wear under the damn thing. It worked out great! (It’s usually not quite as obscenely short as it looks in the photos..) The only downside is that I can now only wear this skirt with that dress, unless I decide to go back and make some sort of slip, which I kind of want to do just so I can wear it with some kind of cropped top.

Anyway, it’s super fun to wear (I felt slightly like a peacock with all that extra fabric hanging off my bum) and I definitely want to make another one but it’s one of those skirts where you have to stop yourself and think, do I really need this in two different colors? And then the answer is always yes. But hesitantly yes.

You guys, I finally got to photograph this dress (read: I dragged Seester out of bed while she was trying to nap and made her take photos of me) and I’m so excited to finally share it! I’ve been planning this dress ever since the first time I watched Shindig and the tiniest flicker of “Ooh maybe I should make that someday!” crossed my mind back in 2006. Then there was that time in 2007 when idiot me decided to try to make it in what was essentially quilting cotton. That was actually quite comical. I think I got about two ruffles in when I tried the skirt on and realized it already weighed ten pounds. Yikes!

Anyway, it’s done! The nitpicky perfectionist in me is twitching slighting and wanting to trim 1.5″ off the peplum and add a ribbon trim but I’m trying to smother her with pillows and shut her in an attic closet somewhere.

Since there are so many parts to this dress I thought I’d briefly share how I did each section.

Bodice:

You’re going to laugh at me but remember in this post when I mentioned that to date I’d only made one successful By Hand LondonElisalex? Well this was it. No joke. Obviously I altered the neckline a bit but that’s the pattern I started with. I raised the neckline significantly and then cut a slightly curvy V-shape. For the fabric I used some sheer white floral organza over a layer of white rayon challis, a layer of muslin for thickness, and then a layer of this crappy lining fabric that I sort of hate but was the right color. To get the ruffly/pleated look in the front, I basically used the same technique as with this dress to cut out the pattern piece, but then instead of tiny tucks, I just pinned down the pleats, ironed them in place, and then basted the sides down to the rayon challis and muslin and treated it all as one pattern piece.

I used pink organza ribbon (2-3 layers I think) for the pink stripe down the middle and then just sewed white buttons on top of them like a false button placket. The “belt” is also wider pink organza ribbon. There’s also some pink lace trim along the neckline that I hand-stitched in. The peplum was done the same way as the rest of the bodice and was self-drafted by cutting out two curved trapezoids, and then cutting the back in half to accommodate a zipper. I measured the width by making the top edge of each trapezoid two times wider than the lower bodice edge it would be attached to in order to account for gathering. The back of the bodice is just held together by an invisible zipper.

Sleeves:

The sleeves were a bit tricky! First I kept drafting puffed sleeves that were too small. I still think they could be a touch more dramatic but whatever. Then I couldn’t get them the right color. I couldn’t find the sheer floral organza in the right shade of pink so I decided to dye them, which led to a wonderfully fun (and smelly) adventure of polyester fabric dye. It actually worked great except that the pink dye I bought turned out to be a more purply fuchsia that made the rest of the dress look orange. Ruh roh. So I tossed that idea, cut out new sleeves in white, and decided to sew a layer of the same pink chiffon used on the bottom tier of the skirt as an overlay over the white organza. You can still see the floral detail and they match the rest of the dress perfectly. I have no idea why I didn’t think of that first.

The chainette fringe thing was hilarious. I bought this fringe on ebay and then proceeded to watch all the youtube tutorials to knot it by hand. At one point I had it pinned to my pants and was trying to keep it even while knotting. In the end it was easiest to just pin it to the sleeve (which was at this point already attached to the bodice) and do it standing. The little tassels were harvested from a heinous upholstery trim that happened to have gold and pale ivory tassels. I had tossed the ivory ones in the pink polyester dye and luckily they didn’t turn out totally fuchsia. I sewed those on by hand, not terribly gracefully but I’m pretty happy with the effect.

Skirt:

This thing was straight up madness. I can’t even. I have a notebook somewhere with pages of scribbling as I struggled to do the math required to even figure out how many yards of each color I needed. I basically made a gigantic floor-length circle skirt out of a lightweight cotton, and then marked rows where each tier would go. Each tier consisted of sewing down a 7″ tall strip of hand-gathered tulle, then sewing down an 8″ strip of hand-gathered chiffon. I used poly chiffon so I just burned the edges to prevent fraying because the idea of anything else would’ve made me cry tears.

Once all the tiers were sewn down I put a zip in the back and we were good to go!

Hoopskirt:

I read like tentutorialsonhowto makea hoopskirt and sort of cobbled together my own method. I knew I didn’t want the hoops to be attached to another skirt because it was already going to be a lot of fabric so I opted for a hoop + strips of fabric method. I was originally going to make a tutorial on how to do it but honestly it turned out looking not so pretty so I’m pretty sure no one should use this method haha. I basically used this tutorial except I used thick twill tape instead of fabric and had no way of stabilizing each inserted hoop where it was supposed to go so the hoops kept sliding around and not staying put. You can kind of see what I’m talking about here and here.

I used about 10 yards of plastic tubing from Home Depot (the kind that was 5/8″ outer circumference and 1/4″ opening). So yeah, the intersections of where the hoop meets the fabric/twill tape need to either be drilled down in place or staple-gunned or something. The tubing itself was great though. It was strong enough to hold its shape as a hoop but super lightweight. Since I didn’t want to spend $5 per tube attacher-thingy, I just cut up two 2″ strips of plastic boning, inserted it into one end of the tube, attached the other end of the hoop, and then taped it closed. It worked surprisingly well! Boyfriend hardcore doubted me. To be fair, it looks quite janky but again, I don’t recommend following this tutorial unless like me, you were three days from needing this dress to be poufy and had no other options.

So anyway, WAHHH it’s done!! I can’t wait to wear this while I watch Shindig. I’m not remotely joking.

Sidenote: It just occurred to me that the hands-outstretched-with-fruit is highly reminiscent of the covers of a certain sparkly-undead-teenage-abusive-relationship story that will remain unnamed and now I can’t unsee it. GAH. I just needed to incorporate strawberries somehow and a banquet hall buffet table seemed unreasonable. How will we know unless we question it!

I finished this dress a while ago (like, over a year ago!) and then never posted pictures of it. Whoops.

Walking out of the movie theatre after I saw Part 1 of the Deathly Hallows was slightly overwhelming. A chunk of my brain wanted the movie to keep going and hated that I had to wait another seven months to finish the movie, another chunk was sad that there was only one movie left. But mostly I wanted to rush home so I could google photos of Hermione’s entire wardrobe throughout the film. Particularly the lovely blazer outfit from the beginning, the dark blue asymmetrical sweater thing, the gorgeous fair isle sweater, and the red dress she wears to the wedding. (Also Ginny’s dress at the wedding and Ron’s brown sweater but that’s a different story.)

Anyway, this dress was one of the first things I made from that movie, and was essentially the product of one week’s worth of sewing ruffles. Ruffles made of chiffon.

See? Ruffles. I wasn’t kidding.

Other than the ruffles, the rest of the dress is pretty basic. I used red chiffon for the outer layer and a thicker red satin for the lining. I drafted the bodice myself and made the skirt out of four panels with a slight gather at the waistline. After that it was just a matter of looking at reference photos for ruffle placement!

On that note, it’s pretty difficult to take spinning photos of oneself. I failed miserably.

Have a nice Tuesday! :]

Edit: I’ve gotten several comments/emails about this so I thought I’d mention it again here. I didn’t use a pattern this dress, I drafted the bodice directly to my own measurements. If I ever decide to draft a pattern someday (which will not be in the foreseeable future since I have absolutely no skills in drafting patterns of other sizes), I’ll definitely make it available here.

This is probably the least well put-together version of this dress that I’ve made but it’s one of my favorites. The chiffon was an absolute nightmare to work with but I like the end effect. Plus I was figuring out the pattern as I went along so there’s small iffy bits, especially along the placket and neckline.

I went entirely according to the pattern on this one but the waistline is a touch too high for my freakishly long torso so I lowered it by two inches on all of the other ones. It kind of works with the chiffon though, kind of a babydoll dress effect.

Yesterday I tagged along with a friend while he was picking out shoes. And then I got distracted by all the pretties.

Before I knew what had happened, I was walking out of the store clutching these lovelies.

On the way home, I was daydreaming about all the different outfits I would wear these shoes with until it occurred to me that I did not have a single outfit that would work with these shoes. Maybe dark jeans and a muted top, but that’s pretty boring.

So today I went off to the fabric store in search of fabric because the dress-making tingles haven’t gone away. I thought I had perused every bolt in the shop and was on my way out when this one flung itself at me, screaming “Buuuuy meeee!” in a tinny voice. And who can say no to fabric so purtty?

It’s a somewhat sheer chiffon, hence the lining. I think it’s going to be a Darling Ranges dress. Possibly with some ruffle-age.